|
.vn launch delayed
The launch of
.vn at the second level has been delayed until Monday 14 August. The
registry is still processing the recent sunrise applications and
hopes that these will go live on Monday as well.
Cameroon registry redirects .com typos
In a bold move reminiscent of VeriSign’s SiteFinder project (the trigger for years of legal wranglings between
VeriSign and ICANN), the registry operator
for .cm (Cameroon) recently began redirecting all unregistered .cm
domains to an advertising portal. This appeared to be an attempt to capitalise on
misspellings of .com URLs, where the ‘O’ had been omitted from
‘.com’.
At the time of writing, it appears that a number of key brands
have not yet been registered in .cm - 'ebay', 'google' and 'microsoft'
for example. Since domains such as these are so frequently browsed,
the incidence of a misspelling is fairly
high, potentially signifying substantial returns
for the Cameroon registry. In fact, statistics from Alexa.com taken
on 7 August 2006 showed that the domain 'google.cm' was the 97,576th
most-popular site on the web, with a reach of 120 out of every
million web users.
However, it appears that the redirection stopped operating very
recently. At this stage it is not known why. The story was covered
in various news articles earlier this week.
Up till now, we have been more familiar with this type of
practice at the second level - i.e. the registration of a common
misspelling of a brand as a domain name - often referred to as "typosquatting".
74,000 .eu domains suspendedEURid, the non-profit
organisation that operates the .eu registry, announced on 24 July
that it had suspended 74,000 .eu registrations and is suing some 400
registrars for breach of contract.
The registrars are alleged to have "warehoused" the names
themselves under an assumed company name (Ovidio Ltd, Fausto Ltd and
Gabino Ltd) with the intention of making the domains available to
the public at a later stage, for a premium price.
The fate of these domains depends upon the court’s decision.
EURid would like to make them available for registration at some
point in the future.
Damien Hirst takes on cybersquatter
The artist Damien Hirst has complained to Nominet about the
registration and use of damien-hirst.co.uk by ‘Internet artist’,
Simon Phillips. Hirst claims that visitors to the website at
www.damien-hirst.co.uk might believe the site was his official site.
Nominet has given Phillips three weeks to respond, after which a
process of mediation will be initiated.
Phillips has said that he will defend his position robustly,
whereas Hirst has promised to initiate legal proceedings against
him, should Nominet fail to order the surrender of the domain.
Jonathan Robinson, Chief Operating Officer at NetNames
comments, “Celebrities must wake up and realise they are just as
susceptible to attack from cybersquatters as are big corporations.
The Internet is fertile ground for domain name speculators and too
many high profile individuals are still leaving themselves wide open
to attack. By being proactive and registering and retaining control
of web site addresses bearing their names, famous faces such as
Damien Hirst could easily avert ugly situations like this.”
©
Copyright NetNames 2006. All rights reserved.
|
